A Plan to Fight Islamic State

A jihadist cancer in Iraq and Syria is spreading, and U.S. options are flawed. Here's a way to turn the tide.

When President Barack Obama called the Islamic State a "cancer" on Wednesday, the description may have been more apt than he intended. The Sunni jihadist group is indeed a malignant tumor metastasizing in the body of the Middle East. But like cancer, it will be stubbornly difficult to defeat—and some of the cures could end up killing the patient.

The spread has been shockingly quick. In June, the Islamic State surged deeper into Iraq, taking Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, advancing close to Baghdad and threatening Kurdish territory. The group even declared a "caliphate." Only Mr. Obama's Aug. 7 decision to launch U.S. airstrikes halted its advance.

The Islamic State is stalled militarily but far from beaten. But there is a way to turn the tide.

The Islamic State's evil could almost seem cartoonish if it weren't so horrible. The beheading of journalist James Foley was only the latest in a long line of atrocities. In Iraq, the group called for exterminating male members of the minority Yazidi group and selling Yazidi women into slavery. In Syria, the Islamic State crucified those who opposed it. The group bears the blame for much of the savagery against civilians in Syria—in a conflict that the U.N. estimates has claimed more than 190,000 lives.

This humanitarian disaster is bad enough, but the Islamic State also poses a strategic threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East that even the most hardhearted realist cannot easily dismiss. Iraq's stability, precarious even before the latest Islamic State campaign, is now in serious jeopardy. Iraq could join Syria as another failed state, and a far more important one given its oil reserves. A broader conflagration could risk more intervention by Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other neighbors. West European governments fear terrorism at home from Islamic State converts. And ironically, the terrorist threat to the U.S. is now more direct: By striking the Islamic State, the U.S. has risen higher on its (long) list of enemies.

The Obama administration, which has—with some justification—tried to avoid entanglement in Iraq and Syria, has an array of "treatments" at its disposal to attack this growing cancer. They all have one thing in common: They won't work well.

The overwhelming problem is the lack of suitable allies. Forget assembling a "coalition of the willing" against the Islamic State—the best you're likely to get is a coalition of the inept, the corrupt, the fanatical and the balky.

ENLARGE

An Islamic State militant waves a flag in Raqqa, Syria.
Reuters

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In Iraq, former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki systematically alienated the country's Sunnis and Kurds. As the Islamic State advanced, many Sunnis rose up against his government, and U.S.-trained military forces disintegrated. Mr. Maliki is out now, but the new government in Baghdad is shaky, the Kurds are openly discussing a push for independence, and sectarian divisions plague the country.

In Syria, the problem is even worse. U.S. policy is now aimed at both overthrowing Bashar al-Assad, the country's dictator, and defeating the Islamic State—one of the toughest groups fighting to overthrow Mr. Assad. Only a year ago, the U.S. was on the verge of bombing the Assad regime; now it is bombing the Assad regime's enemy, the Islamic State. The Syrian opposition is no more unified, and the radical element in its ranks is much stronger.

Some approaches are clearly disastrous. Paying ransom money to rescue brave journalists in the Islamic State's clutches will only lead to more hostage taking. Terrorist groups prefer to kidnap Westerners from countries like France, which has given terrorists more than $50 million since 2008 in ransom payments. The more the U.S. pays, the more likely terrorist groups are to kidnap Americans. We must brace for more stomach-churning, Internet-distributed beheadings.

Another problem: Americans have no appetite for a large-scale deployment of military forces. A June poll found that most Americans didn't favor airstrikes on the Islamic State, let alone ground troops.

But there is a path ahead. A combination of middle-range options—political reform in Baghdad, a limited use of U.S. military force, and efforts to build up local capacity and prevent new infections—offers the most hope, even if this cocktail will take months if not years to take hold.

Political reform in Iraq is the foundation on which all else rests. The replacement of Mr. Maliki by Haider al-Abadi earlier this month offers some hope that Iraq's Shiite-dominated government might become more inclusive and convince some of the country's minority Sunnis to turn against the Islamic State. Iran, a Shiite neighbor that backs Mr. Abadi's government, also opposes the Sunni jihadists, which could encourage Mr. Abadi to be more conciliatory than his predecessor. But at best, we're likely to go from abysmal to simply bad: Mr. Abadi is cut from the same cloth as Mr. Maliki and shares the same Shiite-chauvinist power base.

Still, splitting the Islamic State's zealots off from the rest of Iraq's Sunnis is quite doable. The Islamic State surged in June, in part, because Sunni tribes, ex-Baathists and other Sunnis had joined the fray against the Maliki government. At the height of the troop surge that began in 2007, the U.S. had turned these fighters against the jihadists. Doing so again without a significant U.S. presence on the ground will be far harder—but if Mr. Abadi's government extends a real olive branch to its Sunni citizens, the Islamic State could rapidly lose much of its support.

The best long-term hope is to help grow local military forces and build up their capacity. Iraq's forces collapsed in the face of the Islamic State's summer offensive, and their morale and cohesion must be restored. Part of this problem is technical, and the sustained deployment of U.S. advisers can improve their performance.

But the bigger problem is political. Iraqi forces had more training and far better equipment than the Islamic State (though when they ran away, the radicals found themselves with a cornucopia of advanced U.S. military hardware), but many of them have no faith in their officers and no loyalty to their political leaders. So without political reform, military reform will fail.

Pushing the Islamic State back in Iraq does little good if it remains strong across Iraq's blurry border with Syria. Syria's beleaguered moderate opposition forces must be trained far more extensively, enabling them to oppose both the killers in the Assad regime and the fanatics of the Islamic State.

U.S. air power and special operations forces can prevent the Islamic State from growing further. But airstrikes can't evict it once and for all. Lasting successes will come only when ground forces can occupy the territory after the jihadists flee. And that means Iraq's government needs to step up—and moderate Syrian rebels need urgent help.

While working on all these fronts, Washington must try to contain the contagion. The U.S. should work with Turkey, Jordan and other neighbors to meet desperate cries for aid in the tent cities of Syrian refugees and discourage self-defeating behavior.

We're in for a long slog. Syria is a failed state, and Iraq is becoming one. In the near term, the best the U.S. can do is to put the Islamic State on its back foot. It is tempting to turn around and go home, but that would risk an even worse disaster.

—Dr. Byman is a professor in the Security Studies Program at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

"After they flee"? Reminds me of the President's "leave the battlefield" entreaty. And what will happen to them "after they flee"? They'll evolve into good citizens, maybe?

I am not particularly violent or warlike, nor am I anywhere close to right-wing. But there is such a thing as a threat so primal as to preclude all possibility of any resolution other than inflicting so much pain and so much fear that they don't try any of it again for the foreseeable future. What other possible strategy can work? I'm asking.

IMHO, gloves off and kill every last one of them we can find. Every one.

There is no way to contain this contagion. Muslim terrorists are brainwashing young muslims' brain to join their groups. Because there are no well-organized education systems in the Middle East, it is hard for the western countries and the United states to stop the expansion of these terrorists groups. It is hard to stop them to occupy the failed states. I believe that there is no way that can stop those islamists from doing what they want to. ISIS now is so rich by the money they stole from the banks and the oil and gas resources that they own.

"But there is a path ahead." We have heard this. And so have many others, for years and years. Decades. Centuries. The path ahead has been with no end. No end to Muslims loving to kill Muslims. Muslims loving to bring in suckers to help kill other Muslims. Muslims loving to blame and kill non-Muslims for Muslims liking to kill Muslims. Muslims just loving to kill and be killed.

The path ahead? The path ahead has to be realistic about the Muslim world. Muslims will not get along with anyone unless the anyone is at best subordinated and persecuted in their society. Muslims will not get along with each other. Sunnis and Shiites will never share power. They will never unite to form a country.

The cancer in the Muslim World is not ISIS, as much as it is Muslim culture in general. The path ahead is containment. Containment until the oil runs out, and the money for war runs out with it.

We are not fighting Muslims any more. We are fighting Orcs from Lord of the Rings. Look at how many times we read about "tribal elders". Even with big oil the Middle East is a series of Middle Kingdoms. Do we get serious ground troops from Saudi Arabia? No. What we hear with our eyes as Americans is this. "IF the Americans blow up an enemy mosque, then Americans are infidels. If Muslims blow up a mosque then Allah Be praised."

I think the professor needs to go back to lecturing. My intention is not to be mean or angry, but I don't see any answers. In simple terms Americans are fed up with Muslim factions who will not fight for their own countries, will not stand up to terror even on their own soil, run in the face of danger, cheer when an American gets killed, and hate American "infidels" while demanding we send in soldiers to protect them. Face it. Americans have compassion fatigue!

"Another problem: Americans have no appetite for a large-scale deployment of military forces."

When the presidential leadership is so inept, who would want to put young men in harm's way under such a person? Many who would be willing to support rabid extermination of ISIS don't believe president Erkel can lead from behind without exposing all our soldiers to unnecessary risk.

The author is an academic. Someone that has not had to make anything work in the real world. His prescription is, "A little bit of everything," and presumably a sprinkling of magic dust.

Bush's decision to invade and conquer is done. Can't be changed.

Obama thought he could change history by pretending it didn't happen. So he made the grave error of removing all troops before long term stability was achieved.

People willfully deceived themselves, wanting so much to believe that Obama was magic. Now they are deceiving themselves believing that small doses of this and that will fix things and remove the threat.

It was a disaster forObama to leave Iraq the first time.His “red line” and other actions in his “lead from behind”military-politico policy have left friends
and enemies both skeptical.

The author is right that troops on the ground are necessary. This being the case, it was foolish militarily
for Obama to limit our engagement.

The world is
beginning to understand the danger of a radical Islamist state anywhere. The threat extends from the sands of the
Middle East to the streets of Western Nation.
The people of the world who want peace are begging for leadership. It is time for America to respond.

We need to define the “victory” we intend, get
other nations (both Muslim and Non-Muslims) behind us and then put the
combined resolve together to accomplish the mission. Bush’s
“surge” was successful; the world
knows that we have the military force necessary. Under Obama we haven’t displayed the will or the
political skill to succeed.

Here is an interesting perspective. If you change the names of the "players/events", e.g., Maliki to obama, the down sizing of the U.S. military, you could say this is happening, right now, in America.

Obama's decision to pull the troops out allowed for this "cancer", as he now chooses to call it, to spread. As he lacks the foresight and fortitude required in making strategic decisions, he's hasty in making tactical decisions - only to appease his base. This lack of discipline is evident in his entire approach to governing. We can only hope for a more level-headed successor.

“The best long-term hope is to
help grow local military forces and build up their capacity. Iraq's forces
collapsed in the face of the Islamic State's summer offensive, and their morale
and cohesion must be restored. Part of this problem is technical, and the
sustained deployment of U.S. advisers can improve their performance.” , Daniel Byman, August 24, 2014 WSJ essay

“A
modern jihadist will tell you different: "What kills us makes us
stronger." The explicit warning sign came early in the form of suicide
bombers. Then Iraq - where ten years and $1.7 trillion of American military "might" led to a
terrorist-run caliphate.” Alaistari Sloan - Americans are back
on the war bandwagon, Al Jazeera opinion, August 24, 2014

Wow! Had to get to the 13th paragraph to find out what Professor Byman's plan actually is. Typical of muddle-headed academicians and think tankers.

As long as we have Barack Hussein Obama, a Muslim sympathizer who doesn't believe in America, as Commander-in-Chief, this crisis will not only continue, but get worse. And if-- God forbid-- we get not only another Democrat, but a woman, as his successor, you can really kiss our cherished Western freedom goodbye.

The more complicated the solution, the greater the risk of failure -- too many moving parts in this article. I think Bull Halsey had it right: Hit them hard, hit them fast, and hit often. We know what they fear most, because they told us. Air power and drones. It took Colin Powell (eke!) 100 days to make that point.

The unpalatable truth is that the so-called Syrian moderate opposition has already lost the battle. It is no match for the money, firepower and manpower of ISIS. Barring direct US intervention on the theater of war, the sad reality is that to defeat ISIS, the US will need to come to terms with the need to do what only yesterday seemed unthinkable: Ally with its declared archenemies, Iran and the Assad regime, to combat the scourge that is ISIS.

One thing the US should do is make plain that those cowardly European nations that rely on our military to protect their energy sources and general security at no real cost to them (particularly Italy, Germany, even France) and then finance ISIS through massive ransom payments can no longer do so at no cost. These are the same who's collusion in both paying ransom and financing much of the world's piracy has encouraged and enabled much of it. It is well past time to chalk this up to "humanitarian" efforts. It is done solely out of political cowardice, refusing to take any political hit that has to be explained to their fat and happy constituencies.

While they may be far beyond being shamed into action, we should use the cudgel of trade and aid to do what we can.

The peoples of the middle east need to be allowed to work out their own destiny. European colonization and USA meddling has caused more problems for these tribal people. The religious groups deserve each other and need to decimate each other. Perhaps the survivors of the religious can make peace with the more rational. The oil belongs to those who physically have it.

One may presume safely, I think, that people who operate on the basis of
terror can be influenced by terror. So, yeah. Let's terrify them. If
the only way they can live on the same planet with the West without
beheading its citizens is to live in abject fear of ever doing this
again, then let's inflict it. And I hate to say it, but Barack Obama,
who has a lot of policy ideas I support, is not the guy to head that
job. Come to think of it, I'm not sure the American people have the
stomach for it. Not until it gets a lot worse, which it will if we
don't do something fairly close to what I'm advising.

@Leon Longchamp I would do terroristic things. I would drop leaflets on ISIS held towns saying that the B-52s are coming in 12 hours and are going to inundate the town with pigs blood. Then drop some red substance in globs like napalm of old. Try to get huge waves of refugees stampeding across their rear lines.

Make sure every bridge is bombed with pigs blood every night. Make sure you say that all killed ISIS members wil be doused in pigs blood and left out for the animals to eat.

These cartoonish characters who follow a cartoonish religion can be defeated with cartoonish weapons.

@RICHARD KELLEY They are two different statements, if you can't see that, no help for you.

Firstly, the stimulus of $782 B was greater than George W Bush spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. So the second opinion is very suspect.

Secondly, the US quieted the country, so there was victory under George W Bush, a peace that was Obama's to lose, and yes, if you have a feckless, incompetent leaderr you can waste a lot thatwas gained under a previous regime.

Thirdly, there will be no ISIS in 20 years. Obama may be reticent to go after them, but he is likely the only American who feels that way. Most of us are not moslem.

What led to a terrorist state in Iraq is the lack of resolve to finish the fight. A very hard thing to do in any war. And an observation made by many a seasoned special operator who served in Iraq. They were defeated and moved to Syria. We let our foot off their throats and now they are back.

@Laura Laredo LOL. Remember when Oliphant would depict G.H.W. Bush with a small purse hung over his arm? I humbly submit that Mr. Obama is not the first Black President, as this honor falls upon Mr. Clinton. I further submit that Mr. Obama is our first female President, and not the Margaret Thatcher kind. Mr. Oliphant had the purse right, just the wrong President.

@George Hayduke Answer: no. From my perspective, the power elite in most of these countries do not have their citizens in mind. Look at the pictures of these jihadists: young men, uneducated (for the most part), without jobs or families. Absent those incentives to stay home, they're easy recruits for a cause that pays. Had their governments created and supported an environment for these young men to be productive and peaceful, they would likely not be running around the deserts of the Middle East in machine gun-equipped Toyotas waging war. Alas, Arab governments show little ability to govern; they only rule by corruption for their own gain.

@James Ewins I would who heartedly agree with you, but for the reality that these "tribes" can access chemical munitions in Syria, nuclear materials, and eventually, nuclear weapons in Iran. ISIS is a perfect whipping boy to demonstrate to Iran that a military deterrence is real and present, and can be employed against them at 3 a.m.

@James Ewins I would like to agree, but cannot. Our military should be used to protect American freedom from foreign threats, our police used to protect use from domestic threats. I do think our rights as Americans are threatened directly by Islamic terrorism. I prefer to eliminate the threat on their land rather than wait until they attack ours again. So we have to find a way to eliminate the threat. My preferred option would be massive and continuous bombing of land known or likely to harbor terrorists who will likely mount attacks against Americans. What the Allies did to defeat Germany and Japan in WWII comes to mind.

@James Heath@RICHARD KELLEY Certainly two different statements.The question is, if 10 years and 1.7T (or whatever very large number) didn't get the job done, what makes you think sending "advisers" will help anything?

That said, I'm all for finishing anything started.

1. I don't believe we should 'start' before 'finished' is clearly defined.2. Obama & company are NOT an administration that could lead a Cub Scout pack through the park, much less rally foreign and domestic support, plan and execute a war.3. I question whether any amount of military defeat will dissuade Muslims from a goal of world domination and universal Sharia law.

Please - - define "success". No, I am not busting your chops. I'm sincerely trying to see what a "win" would look like. Pushing fanatics across one border to another doesn't look like "victory" to me - - -

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